Oracle Distributed Systems

Preface

In my nearly 10 years of Oracle database administration experience, I’ve witnessed the emergence of a distributed database technology whose sophistication level has risen while the average user’s understanding of that technology has not. With the advent of Oracle’s advanced replication facilities, relatively few DBAs are well versed in all aspects of Oracle’s distributed systems offerings, and few engineers fully recognize the implications that distributed systems have for their code. As a result, many hours are spent struggling to implement doomed solutions, and still more hours are spent supporting hobbled architectures.

Oracle’s exploding feature set is not to blame these lost hours. There is a vast gap between the theoretical, or academic, knowledge base surrounding distributed systems and the practical, or applied, knowledge base. In general, the people who understand the principles and nuances of a distributed environment are not the same people who are out there building systems. The publications on distributed systems reflect this divide; most books are either very theoretical and contain little specific advice or are rather simplistic cookbooks for those on the front lines (or in the kitchen, as the case may be). Needless to say, it can be rather frustrating to find the information you need when one book discusses set theory and another says “point here, click there.”

This book strives to close the gap between the theoretical and the applied by explaining the objectives of the ideal distributed system in the context of Oracle’s technology. I examine the reasons why distributed systems should have certain properties and discuss how Oracle is designed to deliver these properties. I also provide design recommendations for various common requirements. And, finally, I deliver programming examples and scripts and tricks for the DBA. I wish I had had this book 10 years ago.

Audience for This Book

This book is intended primarily for Oracle database administrators, developers, system administrators, network administrators, and others who need to build or maintain distributed database systems.